Category Archives: IT Security

Patch Tuesdays 2012

Posted on Sunday 13 November 2011 by richardsiddaway

I’ve shown these functions before but as we head rapidly towards 2012 we need to plan next years schedules.  One perennial for Windows administrators is patching – therefore we need to know patch Tuesdays. This is next years offenders 10 … Continue reading →

Posted in IT Security, Powershell | Leave a comment

Set registry key owner

Posted on Friday 11 November 2011 by richardsiddaway

In chapter 7 of PowerShell and WMI I stated that I would post a .NET version of a script to set ownership of a registry key. The WMI method needs Vista or above so we need the .NET version for … Continue reading →

Posted in .NET, IT Security, PowerShell V2 | Leave a comment

Using AccountManagement classes to set local accounts expiry

Posted on Friday 15 July 2011 by richardsiddaway

This is a little more verbose than the WinNT example function set-expirydate { [CmdletBinding(SupportsShouldProcess=$true)] param ( [parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$true, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true)] [string]$computer, [parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$true, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true)] [string]$id ) BEGIN {Add-Type -AssemblyName System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement} PROCESS { switch ($computer){ “.” {$computer = $env:computername} “localhost” {$computer = $env:computername} } … Continue reading →

Posted in IT Security, PowerShell and Active Directory, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 | Leave a comment

Setting local account expiry dates

Posted on Friday 15 July 2011 by richardsiddaway

Setting expiry dates on AD accounts is a common occurrence and is well documented. Setting expiry dates on local accounts is also possible $user = [adsi]”WinNT://./Test1, user” $expirydate = (Get-Date).AddDays(2) $user.Put(“AccountExpirationDate”, $expirydate) $user.SetInfo() $user.RefreshCache() $user | Format-List * This uses … Continue reading →

Posted in IT Security, PowerShell and Active Directory, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 | Leave a comment

Windows Update: 5 drivers

Posted on Saturday 18 June 2011 by richardsiddaway

The previous posts just looked at installing software updates.  We can also get driver updates through Windows updates. A simple modification to the get-updates function sets this up. function get-drivers {[CmdletBinding()] param ( [switch]$hidden ) PROCESS{ $session = New-Object -ComObject … Continue reading →

Posted in IT Security, PowerShell V2, Technology | Leave a comment

Windows updates: 4 tidy up get-update

Posted on Sunday 12 June 2011 by richardsiddaway

Looking at the get-update function we created earlier I wanted to tidy it up a bit. 001002003004005006007008009010011012013014015016017018019020021022023024025026027028029030031032033 function get-update {[CmdletBinding()] param (  [switch]$hidden ) PROCESS{ $session = New-Object -ComObject Microsoft.Update.Session$searcher = $session.CreateUpdateSearcher() # 0 = false & 1 = trueif ($hidden){ $result = $searcher.Search(“IsInstalled=0 and Type=’Software’ and ISHidden=1” )}else { $result = $searcher.Search(“IsInstalled=0 and Type=’Software’ and ISHidden=0” )} if ($result.Updates.Count -gt 0){ $result.Updates |  select Title, IsHidden, IsDownloaded, IsMandatory,  IsUninstallable, RebootRequired, Description}else { Write-Host ” No updates available”}  }#process … Continue reading →

Posted in COM, IT Security, PowerShell V2 | 6 Comments

Windows Updates: 3 Installing Updates

Posted on Saturday 11 June 2011 by richardsiddaway

Now we have discovered the updates we have available we can think about installing them. 001002003004005006007008009010011012013014015016017018019020021022023024025026027028029030031032033034035036037 function install-update { $session = New-Object -ComObject Microsoft.Update.Session$searcher = $session.CreateUpdateSearcher() $result = $searcher.Search(“IsInstalled=0 and Type=’Software’ and ISHidden=0” ) if ($result.Updates.Count -eq 0) { Write-Host “No updates to install”}else {$result.Updates | select Title} $downloads = New-Object -ComObject Microsoft.Update.UpdateColl foreach ($update in $result.Updates){ $downloads.Add($update)} $downloader = $session.CreateUpdateDownLoader()$downloader.Updates = $downloads$downloader.Download() $installs = New-Object -ComObject Microsoft.Update.UpdateCollforeach ($update in $result.Updates){ if ($update.IsDownloaded){   $installs.Add($update) }} $installer = $session.CreateUpdateInstaller()$installer.Updates = $installs$installresult = $installer.Install()$installresult }   The function looks for non-hidden software … Continue reading →

Posted in COM, IT Security, PowerShell V2 | 1 Comment

Identity and Access Management

Posted on Tuesday 4 November 2008 by richardsiddaway

Realtime Publishers have just published my "book" The Essentials Series: Enterprise Identity and Access Management.  Its a free download from http://nexus.realtimepublishers.com/ESEIAM.htm. Enjoy   Share this post :   Technorati Tags: Identity,Access,Management

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Security by Annoyance

Posted on Sunday 11 November 2007 by richardsiddaway

I have just received an attachment via hotmail.  The zip file contains an .msi.  I know the person sending me the file and I know what the file contains – explicitly. I downloaded the file and tried to extract the … Continue reading →

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OpenOffice Worm

Posted on Friday 25 May 2007 by richardsiddaway

A report here http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsid=8938 about a worm targeting OpenOffice and StarOffice is interesting. The worm, while badly written and actually ineffective, is macro based, precisely the attack vector that the open source community has been attacking Office for possessing in … Continue reading →

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